Our Mission

The Public Health, Innovation and Intellectual Property (PHI) Team is responsible for promoting innovation in the discovery, development, production and delivery of essential health technologies.

PHI is primarily responsible for the interface between public health, innovation, research, transfer of technology and intellectual property. In addition, PHI is the knowledge centre for health-related intellectual property and Assistive Health Technology (AHT). PHI is located in the Department of Essential Medicines and Health Products (EMP) within the Health Systems and Innovation (HIS) cluster

The key activities of PHI include:

Facilitate the establishment of sustainable alternative ways of financing and coordinating R&D for priority health technologies for developing countries in light of market failures

Develop policy guidance and provide technical assistance on management and application of intellectual property with a view to promote needs based innovation and access to patent protected essential medicines and health products

Facilitate technology transfer to and build capacity in developing countries for the manufacturing of strategically selected health products in order to improve access.

Establish WHO global leadership on innovation related to the essential health technologies including point of care diagnostics

Facilitate monitoring and evaluation of GSPA-PHI in 2017 in order to provide evidence for its impact and direction

Develop and lead the Global Cooperation on Assistive Health Technology (GATE).